Manchester Arena - ongoing incident 22/5

It's wrong to confuse ISIS with Islam. The other day, someone told me they were scared living close to the Morden Mosque, and I had to laugh, because the Muslims who worship there, are of the Ahmadi sect, that disavow ALL violence for ANY reason.

If you are looking for horrific justifications for political violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they are easy to find. The Passover itself is a story of God deliberately killing children to extract political concessions from the Egyptians, a story that all believers of the Abrahamic religions must explain to themselves.

Thankfully, most rabbis, priests and imams have found ways to disavow this sort of violence, in their religious teachings, as practiced today.

From ISIS' perspective, we are at war with them. Our own government confirms this:

"The UK has committed over 1,250 military personnel to the region to provide essential support to local forces. In the air, the Royal Air Force has conducted over 1,200 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria - more than any other Coalition country bar America – and provides highly advanced intelligence and surveillance to Iraqi Security Forces. On the ground, the UK has trained over 39,000 Iraqi soldiers in engineering, medical skills and basic infantry. In Syria, UK armed forces are training vetted members of Syrian opposition groups in infantry, medical and explosive hazard awareness skills as part of our counter-Daesh campaign. As a result, Daesh has lost 62% of the territory it once occupied in Iraq and 30% in Syria." (https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/daesh/about)

However, even if we are at war, it's a war crime to target civilians. There is no justification for deliberately killing children attending a concert.

And we should encourage all believers in the Abrahamic religions to interpret their texts the way the Ahmadis do, which is that all violence against civilians is wrong, war or no war.

I'm not being smug.

I said that they don't represent Islam or most Muslims but to deny that the atrocities were conducted by Muslim extremists or even pretend that we don't know who the perpetrators are is akin to hiding your head in the sand.

Too many people only have WW2 as their sole reference point of history and it prevents them from being honest as they're convinced the next holocaust is around the corner at worse or mentioning race or religion - regardless of whenever there is a clear trend - is racist at best.

The fact that it was a young man, of a similar age to those who might have been at the concert, is unsurprising. Another potential example of a man unable to cope with confident, empowered young women. The target wasn't a mistake, attacking teenage and tweenage girls was exactly what he sought

Just as importantly -

US officials (the leaky as a sieve White House?) should be hauled over the coals. UK authorities apparently wanted more time to go about their business without alerting potential contacts, yet showing once again that secrets are not safe in their hands they blabbed the killer's identity to the media. Idiots....

We do not see these Western attacks being carried out by fundamentalists from any other religion

It is always young males affiliated with Islam

Not Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist

There is a problem

That is a fact

If you had a dog

Which ran off and mauled someone

You would be responsible

If you didn't service your car

And an accident occurred

You would be liable

If your children ran amok and caused problem

The parents would be looked at and questions asked

If one doctor committed serial crimes over a number of years

The whole way in which all medical practitioners are assessed and checked is overhauled

Despite the fact many of these fundamentalists are groomed and trained within the umbrella of the UK Muslim community- in mosques and community groups

And this takes support both financial and otherwise

With family members usually seeing a change in behaviour patterns

I have never seen anyone taking some sort of ownership and responsibility that there are major issues

We are beaten over the head daily as NHS staff and told how sh*t we are

And what my colleagues (in the widest sense) do has a massive impact on me
Even though I have no direct control over their actions

I don't see why religion is any different

It is not a passive entity

Actually, let's not.

Because they weren't Catholic terrorists but Irish terrorists and no news agency reference their faith.

I'm from an Irish Catholic background and have met former IRA members and not one has ever said they were fighting for Catholicism and you will not find one IRA justification for their war based on religion.
. That's why things are different now.

Anders Breivik. Dylann Roof. Adam Lanza. Different MOs but still terrorism and none of them Muslim. I could find other non-Muslim mass murderers but frankly my search history is sullied enough just double-checking these three.

Meet my challenge and name as many non Muslim atrocities in the last 20 years and then name as many Muslim ones as you can.

Stop hiding your head in the sand. We have a serious problem with extreme Islamists.

When will you finally acknowledge it? When the inevitable attack on London's theatres happens or when they inevitably target the gay community?

Stop trying to lessen the serious situation we are in.

So what's the common denominator of the overwhelming terrorist attacks in Europe or have I missed something?

What's your solution?